The publication elucidates the life and work of Elisa Tan, a Filipino-Chinese conceptual artist. Her rich, explorative practice, despite being previously unknown in the Philippines, is woven through multiple narratives, informed by the linguistic, economic, and cultural marginalizations that she encountered as an emerging artist in foreign circles. For artist and writer alike, the envelope is a vessel of delay. In her essay, scholar Cristina Juan characterizes this motif in Tan’s work as the ultimate "being-between": a traveling vessel that holds distance and "carries the absence of one in the presence of the other."

“Elisa Tan: Container of Distance” documents the exhibition that showed a recovered “newness” within the artist’s work. The complete, fully formed exhibition, despite being beyond dialogue with the artist, places a particular weight on interpretation as it is introduced to a wider public.